Sock Monkey Visits for the Weekend

Last weekend Mr. Trouble on Feet brought home the class sock monkey from preschool.  Each weekend the sock monkey is a guest in the home of a different preschool student.  Then each family writes about what they did with sock monkey in a notebook to share with the class.    I have a love/hate relationship with these sorts of projects, which also appear in AWANA and in kindergarten.  I want to love the authentic writing experience that this inspires, and because my kidlets always love this project, I’m happy about it on so many levels.  However, every time we have a weekend project like this, something goes wrong.  We forget to write in the notebook until the very last minute, and then we are rushed.  We forget to take the stuffed animal with us when we go places.  We forget to take the stuffed animal back to church or school when we are supposed to.  Something always goes wrong.

I wish I had taken some pictures of sock monkey visiting over the weekend.  Mr. Trouble on Feet was thrilled to have him as a special guest.  Sock monkey got a special seat at the dining room table.  Many, many banana snacks were shared with sock monkey.  Sock monkey watched Mr. Trouble on Feet play fire trucks. He read books with us. He played with The Banana’s girl sock monkey and they became fast friends.  We brought sock monkey to music class last Friday and he watched everyone make music together.  We brought sock monkey out to lunch with us.  Sock monkey watched all the costume preparations for Halloween and supervised the candy trading extravaganza.

Things were going great with sock monkey.  I was feeling so good about all the things we would be able to write about and the fun Mr. Trouble on Feet was having pretending and playing.

Then, Sunday afternoon, Sock Monkey went mysteriously missing.  No one knew where he was on Monday.  By nightfall I was starting to get worried.  Sock Monkey was due at school the next morning.  It had been a crazy night,  so I just assumed that when I did a more thorough cleaning in the morning I would find sock monkey in the cabin room, or maybe in Mr. TOF’s bed, or under a dresser or something.  I knew he had to be in the house.

On Monday morning I began carefully looking.  I thoroughly cleaned the cabin room.  I checked the cars.  I went through everything in Mr. TOF’s room, including the closet.  I cleaned the cabin room a second time.  Dr. Peds was up and searching in nooks and crannies in everyone’s rooms with a flashlight.  We began tearing the house apart looking for this silly sock monkey.  In desperation, at one point we sat down and started looking to see where we might get a new sock monkey to replace this one.  According to the internet, all the local stores were out of sock monkeys that looked like this sock monkey.  We contemplated ordering one online, and kept looking through the house for the missing monkey. I was starting to wonder if he’d been kidnapped.  We checked the treehouse outside.  No luck.

I started to question my parenting abilities.  What kind of mom looses the preschool sock monkey in her haphazardly run household? Why are we so disorganized around here?  And I had been so careful to keep track of that monkey!  I just knew something like this was going to happen.   How was I going to explain this to Mr. TOF’s kind hearted teacher and ten pairs of little preschool eyes?  I felt panic in my heart.  I am not kidding.

Ten minutes before leaving for preschool I shook the blankets out of the basket in the cabin room one more time, and saw sock monkey’s arm peeking out of the pocket of our fleece blanket that turns into a pillow.  We call it the feet-a-pocket blanket because there is a giant pocket that you can stick your feet into.  It was a game of hide and seek, gone all wrong.

My stress level plummeted, but I was off kilter for the rest of the day, and my house was an even bigger  mess than usual because I had been pulling things apart looking for this stuffed monkey.  Everything was strewn about.

We did manage to frantically write down some adventures in the notebook that accompanied Sock Monkey before leaving for preschool, but I’m telling you, that was plenty enough adventure for me for the rest of the week  Missing sock monkeys are no fun.